Up on the mountain

Raymond Chandler once said about writing fiction: “When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.” In his first novel, Bull Mountain, firefighter Brian Panowich seems to have taken Chandler’s advice to heart: His characters brandish weaponry in a way that Charlton Heston might have found disconcerting. The result is a fast-paced and intricate revenge story culminating in a Shakespearean bloodbath.

Foreign feelings in a foreign land

Tracy Slater thought she’d stay in Boston forever. A writing teacher with a Ph.D. in literature, Slater worked with diverse students, practiced yoga, published essays and enjoyed her close-knit community of friends. Yet one fateful summer, she agreed to teach English in Japan. “Don’t fall in love,” said her mother. Naturally, she did.

Growing a mystery

Amanda Quick, a pen name of prolific writer Jayne Ann Krentz, takes readers to Victorian-era London in her latest mystery romance, Garden of Lies. The story follows independent businesswoman Ursula Kern, owner of the Kern Secretarial Agency, who is stunned when one of her employees seemingly takes her own life. Ursula, however, knows the woman too well to believe she would commit suicide. Instead, Ursula is convinced that her friend has been murdered.

Stepping on paws

So-called “blended” families are a complex ecosystem, where kids can play adults against one another and even the goldfish gets a say about who does what on the chore wheel. It’s therefore not so unusual that one family was thrown into disarray by a possessive mutt. Enter Eddie, the Stepdog of the title.

A mystery in the heart of colonial India

As The Strangler Vine opens, William Avery is a typical young soldier in 1830’s colonial India: deep in debt, disdainful of Indian “barbarity,” stalled in his career and desperate to make it back to Devonshire before the cholera picks him off.

To the frontier

It’s 1849 in rural Missouri, and 15-year-old Samantha Young is the only daughter of a Chinese immigrant. Like many fortune-seeking pioneers during the Gold Rush, Samantha’s father has plans to move out West—until a tragedy leaves Samantha orphaned and penniless. To make matters worse, she is then attacked, and though quick thinking saves her life, she accidentally leaves the attacker dead.

A New World with new friendships

Caroline Starr Rose’s new historical novel, Blue Birds, gives middle grade readers an intriguing glimpse of some of the earliest settlers who came to the New World. Vivid personalities bring the 16th-century settlement of Roanoke, Virginia, to life as one young settler from England finds a friend who will change her life.

Two sides of a Louisiana neighborhood

Louisiana’s capital city, Baton Rouge, has its fair share of glamorous and not-so-glamorous stories. M.O. Walsh, author of My Sunshine Away, grew up there, so he captures these contradictions effortlessly in his stunning debut.

Beauty in a bustling world

It’s not often that you see class addressed in picture books in ways that are subtle and seamless, but Last Stop on Market Street, the affectionate story of a young boy and his grandmother, does just that.